


Outta Luck

by FlowersForAliens



Series: Tough Situations - Apex Character Studies [2]
Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Drug Abuse, Gen, Minor psychological themes, Platonic Octane and Lifeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24888703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlowersForAliens/pseuds/FlowersForAliens
Summary: His heart was screaming now, drowning out the quiet hum of the ring. It didn’t make sense, his stim only lasted about six seconds, and it had been at least ten-It was panic. A human emotion that wasn’t boredom or excitement. One that Octane wasn’t terribly familiar with.
Series: Tough Situations - Apex Character Studies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792663
Kudos: 12





	Outta Luck

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Drug use
> 
> For those of you that were unaware, Tom Casiello tweeted a while ago that Octane was given a pet rabbit when he was eleven, and the rabbit’s name was Navidad. 
> 
> I took some liberties with how I think the ring works based on gameplay too!

~~~~O0O~~~~

  
_“I heard bout Navi. Sorry ta hear that, O.”_

_Octavio fell backwards, dangling upside down from the lowest tree branch. He was seventeen, and cutting class for the third time that week. Ajay stood in front of him, eyebrows cocked expectantly._

_“Yeah. You missed the memorial service, Che. There were pyrotechnics and everything!”_

_She rolled her eyes at him. “You expect me to believe that bunny strapped ‘imself to a rocket? He was six, that’s old for a bunny.”_

_Octavio laughed. “Well if I’m being honest, no. He died in his sleep last night, but that’s so booooooring.”_

_“‘N ya grieving process is to lie about it to people on the internet?”_

_He grinned down at her. “Navi wanted to go out the same way I wanna go out! In a blaze of glory! The roar of our fans in the background!”_

_Ajay groaned. “Silva, ya hear yaself? Plannin’ ya funeral while ya still got math homework.”_

_Octavio lifted himself up onto the branch again, swaying slightly with the natural give of the branch. He tested the branch with a gentle bounce, before turning his attention to the branch above him. “Blah! Boring, boring! I’m destined for greatness, Che!”_

_“Ya climbin too high, Silva!”_

_He ignored her. Had anyone ever seen the top of this tree that overlooked the courtyard? What if he was the first one? Octavio glanced down - “Che, I gotta be like, twenty feet up righ-”_

_The branch broke._

~~~~O0O~~~~

“Approaching drop zone.” 

Octane sprung from his spot in front of his gaming set up, the chair spinning in his wake. It was the first game of the season, and it had been a long month of absolutely nothing. He was almost certain the boredom would have killed him if the match had come even a second later. 

He skidded onto the desk of the drop ship in time to catch team announcements. The display above the platform came on - Wraith, Octane, Lifeline. Octane surged his fist in the air. “Oh yeah! There’s no way we can lose with a team like this!” He attempted to throw an arm around each of their shoulders, a gesture that Wraith put a swift end to. 

“Let’s focus that energy on the games, Octane.”

Ajay shoved him off, laughing. “Yeah, O, save it for the ring.” 

The drop pad started it’s descent, a gust of warm air rushing past them as they stepped onto the platform. Octane’s feet tapped against the platform impatiently, eyes scanning Kings Canyon below them. The drop ship was passing directly over the hot zone - Swamps, not his favorite area, but it was only five hundred meters away. Just past the swamps, moving slowly from the offshore rig, was the supply ship.

The countdown started. 

Without hesitation, he pinged the drop ship as their landing spot. Wraith furrowed her brows. “That’s awfully close, Octane. It’s gonna be a bloodbath. Is the loot really gonna be worth it?” 

“It’s not about the loot, chica. Hehe”

He was itching for a fight, and he felt like he had momentum that was unstoppable. The countdown hit zero, and he was diving in an instant. Wraith and Ajay followed begrudgingly, sticking as closely to him as possible. Octane weaved carelessly between a few times, approaching the supply ship at breakneck speeds. The drop pack on his back barely slowed his descent, and he hit the deck of the supply ship hard. 

Ajay missed the ship completely. “Meet chya in the water!” 

Wraith stuck with him, diving straight for the gold shield on the upper deck. “Grab something and jump, Octane!”

Octane, on the other hand, hit the ground running, skidding between Gibraltar and Bangalore to grab an R-99. He spun on a dime to face them, unloading a full clip into Gibraltar’s back. He could hear Wraith leaving the ship at Ajay’s request. They finished off the third team member on the ground, but he wasn’t done with the ship yet. He rounded the corners of the drop ship, rapidly sifting through loot for another gun. All he could find was a frag grenade. “I guess this’ll do!”

Bangalore was still on the upper deck, attempting to help Gibraltar back to his feet. Octane pulled the pin and took a running leap towards her, tackling her to the ground. She kicked him square in the stomach, sending him toppling toward the railing. The metal of his leg caught on the railing, sending him stumbling over the edge and towards the swamps below. 

Octane looked up as he fell, the explosion marking the end of that squad. “Haha, too slow amigo!” 

He rotated his body in time to land on a deck lining the trees at the center of the swamps. A hail of bullets zipped between the buildings below him, and he was ready for another fight. 

Wraith came over the comms. “There are too many teams here, we gotta go!”

“Haha, good! I needed a challenge!”

Octane discarded the mozambique, grabbing a wingman and some spare light rounds from a chest nearby. A competitor, some faceless Joe Schmoe that thought he’d make a name for himself, spotted him from the walkways below and started firing. Octane surged forward off the deck, cheering as he fell from the trees, landing on the attacker’s back. He fired two shots point blank, enough to down him. The other two team members converged on his location, one with a mastiff, the other with R-301. Octane took down the ranged enemy first, but didn’t have time to reload his R-99 before the other was able to land a single shot gun shell dead center on his chest. He stumbled back, reminded abruptly that he had yet to grab a shield, but the last standing team member was reloading. 

“Ha! Amateur!” The competitor looked up just in time to catch two more shots from his wingman. 

“There is a new Kill Leader.”

Wraith came over the comms again. “Octane, lets go! We’re gonna get caught by the ring!”

“Just leave’im. He’ll catch up wit us!” Ajay groaned. 

Their words fell on deaf ears. Instead, Octane turned his attention to the team sloshing through the water below him - “No time to heal up, just reload and go, go, go!” he chanted, dropping from the platform. There were three, Mirage, and two other nobodies. 

“Mirage’s gotta go first.” Octane told himself, wasting no time emptying the last of his light ammo into Elliot’s back. The other two members both turned their fire on him as he ducked behind one of the building supports. Their bullets barely registered, even though they definitely hit. He checked his inventory - three heavy rounds and…. Nothing else. Three rounds, two enemies. 

He couldn’t be more excited. 

The last two opponents were both struggling to reload when he stepped out from behind the support. He surged towards them, firing all three shots into the enemy farthest from him before he was on the last one. It was some new kid, someone he’d likely never see again. They toppled to the ground, and Octane sprung over him like a jackrabbit, planting his legs in the water behind him.

“Sorry amigo, no hard feelings!” Octane quipped as he spun and his foot connected with the side of the opponent's skull. 

With twenty seconds left until the ring moved, he knew he had no time to loot. Instead, he threw a jump pad and quickly took to the sky. He had no shields, barely any health, and not a care in the world. 

He barely registered the arc start connecting with his leg, but definitely caught a glimpse of Mirage shakily pulling himself out of the water, fading gold knock down shield in his hands. The arc start exploded, rocking his field of vision and sending a shockwave through his whole system. He made contact with the ground, head first, and everything went black. 

~~~~O0O~~~~

_“Silva, get up!”_

_Octavio’s eyes fluttered open. The speckled sunlight through the leaves burned in the front of his skull, his chest aching from a force he couldn’t quite remember._

_“Octavio Silva, ya really gon make me call an ambulance?!”_

_His eyes moved to Ajay, standing over him with a rare expression of genuine concern. Again he looked to the tree, spotting the broken branch he’d fallen from, and he came crashing back to reality. The adrenaline caught up with him, and he was on his feet again, grabbing his friend by the shoulders. “Che did you SEE that? Awesome!”_

_Octavio shifted his weight to his right foot, only slightly, and suddenly found himself on the ground once more._

_“Are ya dense? Ya leg’s broke, Silva!”_

_But he could only laugh. The pain was nothing compared to the adrenaline pumping through his veins from the fall. “A doctor can fix my leg, Che. But no doc can give me that kinda rush! I wanna do it aga-”_

_Ajah slapped him upside the head._

_“Hey! What if I have a concussion?!”_

_“Yeah, what if?! Ya lucky ya leg caught on that branch or ya woulda fell on your head. I’d be talkin’ to a corpse right now!”_

_He grinned at the image of Ajay lecturing his corpse, an expression she failed to appreciate. “Ya not always gon have me around, Silva. Onna these days ya gon get hurt and have no one to pick you up. Then what?”_

~~~~O0O~~~~

Octane’s vision faded back into focus. His goggles were cracked, and the sun peaking between the trees burned in the front of his head. Everything felt muffled, slow. There were foot steps behind him, somewhere, and the faint nervous confidence of Mirage’s voice - _“Haha, sorry Octane, but we gotta go!”_

He shook his head, slapping his hands on his cheeks to bring himself back to the present. He glanced at the match feed. Ten seconds until the ring closes.

“Okay, Octane. Just gotta get a little jump start.” 

Blindly, he dug around in the pockets of his chest until his fingers found the plexiglass vial. He rolled over, bracing himself on his knees as he uncapped the needle. He drove the it into his chest, and his senses came roaring back into focus. He was off - left foot, right foot - and he hit the ground again with enough force to rattle his brain for the second time that day. 

Shakily, he lifted himself up again, shaking out his right leg to try and get his bearings. An unfamiliar rattle prompted his attention to his joint - his leg was missing below the knee, the wire nerves and hydraulics dripping from the damaged joint. 

This was bad.

He tapped his communicator. “Ah, hey, Amigos?”

Static. Wraith and Ajay were outside the range the comms allowed. There was no way they’d make it back to him in time. 

He was stuck. 

“Ring Closing.” 

Octane’s eyes darted to the edge of the swamps as the ring came into view, then to his jump pad between him and that point. There was maybe one hundred meters between them, which didn’t give him a lot of time. 

His heart was screaming now, drowning out the quiet hum of the ring. It didn’t make sense, his stim only lasted about six seconds, and it had been at least ten-

It was panic. A human emotion that wasn’t boredom or excitement. One that Octane wasn’t terribly familiar with. 

He shifted again, this time to get a better look at his leg. “Che showed me how to fix it, maybe-” 

The bottom half of his leg was gone. The metal below his knee was fractured, bent, and singed from the force of the arc star, and the rest of his leg was… missing. It had probably landed in the water somewhere between the jump pad and where he landed. 

“This is fine.” He told himself. “Just gotta wing it.” 

Octane pushed himself off the ground and onto his left leg. He’d done this before, around his apartment or Ajays, while his legs were being repaired. He was always offered a crutch or a cane that he rejected each time. This was the same concept, just a couple hundred metres to the next jump tower, and then to safety. No problemo. 

Before he could move, his foot sunk into the soft earth beneath him, sending him toppling once more to the ground. Without both feet to disperse his weight, the waterlogged ground wouldn’t hold up. Octane grumbled, yanking on his leg to pull it from the mud. “Okay, okay. I’ll just have to crawl then.”

A few meters in front of him was a small ledge - that would be his biggest obstacle. But he wasn’t discouraged. He remembered all that junk the doctors told him about the hardships of being legless - right before he got his new legs. He glanced back at the ring, guessing that there was about fifty meters between it and himself. He had time, but just a little. 

Octane lifted himself up again, and started crawling towards the ledge. The first few meters were easy, if a little exhausting, but up close the ledge was daunting. It was a ridiculous thought to him, given that he’d cleared cliffs ten times this size in a single bound, but at that moment it was an actual challenge. He grasped at a root sticking out from the earth as leverage, and that was about as far as he got. The ledge crumbled every time his fingers dug in, the dirt beneath his foot squished uncomfortably every time he tried to pull himself up. 

Finally, he sunk down to the ground, turning back to face the ring once more. It bathed the swamps in a sickeningly orange light, inching towards him at a taunting rate. He’d gone deaf to the steady hum of the ring, not realizing how close it was until it was on him. It overcame his prosthetic leg first and… it didn’t hurt. He could feel the buzzing in his femur where the prosthetic met his leg, but didn’t feel the pain he’d heard all of his fellow legends talk about. Still, Octane kicked his foot in a futile attempt to back away. 

When the ring touched his skin, his nerves lit up with a vengeance, and Octane ground his teeth together. It wasn’t unbearable, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Before a pulse wore off, another washed over him, resonating through each of his bones and his skull. He looked down at the minimap to see there were three minutes until the next round. 

“Three minutes of this? Hijo de-”

Waiting wasn’t his strong suit. 

~~~~O0O~~~~

_“Ay, chica! I really had to wait a whole HOUR for this stupid thing?” He tapped on the neon green plaster wrapping his leg. “Do you know what I could get done in an hour?”_

_“Break every otha bone in ya body, I bet.”_

_“The world record for the gauntlet time is twelve seconds, and I sat in that waiting room for an hour just so they’d tell me somethin’ I already knew!”_

_Ajay pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m missin’ my study group for this, O. Least ya can do is say thank you.”_

_Octavio flashed her his signature grin. “You know I’m thankful, hermana. How about we hit up that yogurt place you like so much? My treat.”_

_She thought about it for a moment before succeeding. “Okay, fine. But no bitchin’ when I get a lot of toppin’s, ya hear?”_

_“Yeah, yeah! Get as much as you want. But lets goooo! I’m tired of sitting here!”_

_“We still hafta wait for your release papers.”_

_“Noooooo!”_

~~~~O0O~~~~

Octane couldn’t hear himself think. He couldn’t hear anything except the angy, vibrating hum of the ring as it rolled across the swamps. He tasted copper, but that only barely distracted him from the numbness settling into his limbs. A fresh, burning pain thundered through his chest with every passing second. 

Five seconds left. At least the end was in sight. Any minute now, he’d blink out of existence and wake up on the drop ship. 

“Round two.” 

A searing hot pain erupted behind his eyes and Octane doubled over. He made a noise that was painfully out of character for him, pathetic and choked. Blindly he grasped at his mask which was suddenly suffocating, tearing it off in time to hack an alarming amount of blood into his hands. He felt like his veins were rebelling against his body and trying to force their way out through his skin. 

He had no idea how much longer this could go on, but the reality set in. 

He was dying, slowly, painfully, quietly. 

Boring.

“Then what?”

Octane knew he wasn’t really dying. Or he was, but it didn’t count. He’d wake up up on the drop ship, sore in all the places he should have been, but fine nonetheless. 

So why was he so scared?

“Then What?”

Ajay’s voice filled his head. He wished she was there with him, cracking jokes, chastising his stupid actions. 

She was right. He didn’t have anyone to bail him out of this situation. 

The stakes were low, but the pain was real. He’d gotten himself into this mess, and now he had to suck it up and wait for it to be over. 

Octane clawed at the pocket on his vest where he kept the stim. Every pulse of the ring blurred his vision a little more, but the glint of the need was crisp. There was a voice in the back of his head screaming that this was a bad idea, but he was desperate for some sort of control over his situation. Some way to look the ring in the eye and say “Jódete I’ll die the way I wanna die!”

He drove the needle into his chest. 

The pain dulled, and the humming stopped, drowned out by the thrumming of his heart in his ears. His joints burned for movement he simply wasn’t capable of, and his nose started bleeding, likely from the spike in his blood pressure. Che had always said the stuff would kill him, but who knew it’d be so literal?

Six seconds passed slowly, his heart settling to a rate so low time itself seemed to slow down. It was a painful, lonely, boring way to die. It sucked, and Octane was defeated. Begrudgingly, he cradled his head back against the soggy earth behind him, looking up to the trees again.

~~~~O0O~~~~

_“How’s the leg, Silva?”_

_Octavio watched the sun dance through the branches of the same tree he’d fallen from earlier in the week. He stuck his leg straight in the air for Ajay to see. “Still broken. And I’m grounded.”_

_She hummed at him. “It’s a good thing. I got som’ i need to talk to ya about, and I need ya to sit still._

_He sat up to face her. It sounded serious, and he didn’t like that._

_“I’m gon be old enough to join the Frontier Corps next year. I’m leavin’ after we graduate.”_

_Octavio furrowed his brows a little. He thought hard about the statement - harder than Ajay really expected him to - before answering. “That kinda sucks.”_

_Ajay shoved him with her foot. “C’mon, O. Ya-”_

_“Yeah yeah. I know.”_

_He was the only person Ajay spoke comfortably about her parents with. And vice versa. Octavio never understood her rigid sense of morals, and he wasn’t sure if she understood his pathological need to defy his father. Despite that, they would commiserate, and he wasn’t about to question her resolve._

_He smiled “That just means you gotta come to my stunt shows when you’re in town now, hermana.”_

_Ajay shook her head at him and laughed. “Yeah? Ya better find someone to keep ya out of trouble or get ya shit together first. Can’t keep fallin’ outta trees for the rest of ya life.”_

_“Falling?! No, no, chica! I told you. I’m gonna be a dare devil! I’ll perfect the art!” Octavio beamed at her. “The next time you see me, I’ll be shattering the gauntlet record while my fans cheer me on!”_

_“Ya gon get yaself killed onna these days, Silva.”_

_“Yeah, but at least it’ll be COOL!”_

~~~~O0O~~~~

_“There is a new kill leader.”_

Wraith looked to the kill feed. “Looks like Octane’s out. Idiot.” 

“Can’t hold his hand all da time.” Ajay grumbled. It was the first time they’d gotten to breath since they dropped, and more importantly: loot.

Wraith shrugged, tucking some additional light rounds into her backpack. “Yeah, but eight eliminations before round two even started? Only an idiot like him could pull that off.” 

“Hmf. Onna these days, his luck’ll run out”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
